Spring Pesto

Last summer I wrote “An Ode to My Food Processor.” As sad as it was to say goodbye to my mini-food processor, we upgraded to the next level. This past weekend we broke out the new, bigger, shinier, and improved food processor, to make one of our favorite recipes: pesto.

We were particularly excited to make pesto because we’ve been growing our own basil. I have many dreams of being a farmer, but sadly our backyard doesn’t have great sunlight. In attempting to develop our green thumbs, David and I are growing basil, rosemary and thyme in pots. And boy are they growing. (I don’t think we can take any credit for it though…mother nature’s pretty amazing.)

This was our first time to really dig into the basil and we had enough leaves for a beautiful batch of pesto. We used it for pesto chicken pasta with tomatoes and chicken.

Cook’s Illustrated’s pesto recipe involves roasting garlic and some other involved steps. It was late Sunday afternoon and I wanted to make the batch quickly, so I bypassed the complicated parts and just through all the ingredients into the food processor.

Simple Pesto (adapted from Cook’s Illustrated)

Ingredients:

2 cups basil leaves tightly packed

3 medium cloves garlic

7 tablespoons olive oil

¼ cup parmesan cheese

¼ cup pine nuts

Salt & pepper

Place all ingredients into the food processor and mix until smooth, or about a minute. You may need to stop occasionally to scrape down the sides. It’s also good to taste as you go. I ended up adding a little more olive oil and parmesan. Add salt and pepper to taste. If you’re making the pesto ahead of time, transfer pesto into a bowl and put saran wrap tightly over the actual pesto so that air can’t get to it, causing it to lose some of its beautiful bright green.

We grilled bone-in chicken breasts on the grill and cut them up. (You can also cook boneless chicken breasts on the stove top but I found the flavor of the grilled bone in to be far superior.) Cook pasta according to cooking instructions. Once cooked, drain immediately and transfer pasta to a bowl. Add chopped baby tomatoes, chicken, and pesto. Toss gently until pasta is covered with pesto. Dig in!

*We used bionaturae gluten-free spaghetti for this dish. It’s one of my favorite brands.

Enjoy! What do you like to make with your food processor? We definitely don’t use ours enough and I would like to put it to more use.